Three innovators developing practical solutions to food insecurity, poor sanitation and limited access to menstrual products have been recognized through the 12th annual Global Citizen Waislitz Awards, with the funding expected to help them expand their work and reach more communities.
Presented by the Waislitz Foundation and Global Citizen, the awards recognize individuals working to end extreme poverty through innovative solutions to challenges affecting communities around the world. The programme provides $300,000 in annual cash prizes, including a $100,000 grand prize and two additional $100,000 awards. The winners also receive networking support designed to help them accelerate and scale the impact of their organizations.
The Waislitz Foundation invests in ideas locally and globally that seek to unlock people’s potential and deliver measurable impact. This year’s winners are working across climate-smart agriculture, sanitation and menstrual health, with each initiative addressing a basic need that continues to affect millions of people.
Smartel Expands Climate-Smart Food Production
Smart Israel, founder and CEO of Smartel, has been named the Grand Prize winner for his work developing technology that enables people to grow food without soil in challenging environments.
A Nigerian innovator and entrepreneur, Smart Israel grew up in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, where he witnessed how resource-related conflict, displacement and climate change contributed to hunger and malnutrition in his community. Those experiences influenced his decision to establish Smartel, a climate-tech enterprise focused on helping communities affected by climate challenges produce nutritious food.
Smartel uses AI-enabled, solar-powered hydroponic systems that allow food to be grown without traditional soil-based farming. The company has already deployed more than 3,000 systems, helping thousands of farmers and families gain access to nutritious food through climate-smart growing methods.
The $100,000 Grand Prize will support Smartel’s plans to reach another 5,000 households with affordable climate-smart food production. It will also help the company expand its community hydroponic hub model, increasing access to food production technology in areas where conventional agriculture is becoming more difficult.
Innovations Address Sanitation and Menstrual Health
Diana Yousef, founder and CEO of change:WATER Labs, received the Disruptor Award for developing a sanitation solution for communities without conventional sewer infrastructure.
Yousef identified the scale of the sanitation problem while working for NASA and focused on the difficulty of safely managing human waste in places where sewer systems are unavailable. Her team developed the iThrone, a waterless and sewerless toilet that reduces waste by rapidly evaporating its water content.
The technology is designed to make safe sanitation more affordable and easier to deploy in communities that cannot depend on conventional plumbing and sewer networks. According to change:WATER Labs, iThrone toilets have already expanded sanitation access to more than 20,000 people across Uganda, Panama and the United States.
The award will support efforts to expand distribution to millions more people by next year, strengthening the company’s goal of making safe and sustainable sanitation more widely available.
Oghenekevwe William Emadago, founder and COO of Girlified, was selected for the People’s Choice Award for his work improving access to affordable menstrual products.
Emadago is an O’Shaughnessy Fellow, PhD researcher and co-founder of Girlified. Growing up in Northern Nigeria, he saw how the cost and limited availability of sanitary pads could affect girls’ ability to attend school. That experience led him to co-found Girlified, which produces sanitary pads from agricultural waste.
The approach is designed to make menstrual products more affordable and accessible while reducing dependence on conventional plastic-based materials. Since 2021, Girlified says it has produced more than 2.8 million pads and reached more than 70,000 women and girls.
The award will support the organization’s plans to expand its operations and work towards reaching 10 million women and girls annually by 2030.
Together, the three initiatives demonstrate how locally driven innovation can address basic challenges while creating opportunities for communities to become more resilient. With funding and networking support from the Waislitz Awards, Smartel, change:WATER Labs and Girlified will have greater capacity to take solutions that are already working to more people who need them.
